Joe Biden, Miami, and Cuba Policy
A recent Cuba Poll by Florida International University (FIU) concluded that most Cuban Americans support President Trump and his policies (See attached). Not surprisingly, "73% of respondents support policies that are designed to promote regime change by putting maximum pressure on the Cuban government. All categories of respondents expressed overwhelming support for hardline policies, with only registered Democrats and the oldest respondents (76 years of age and above) opposing the policies." There is much skepticism about engagement. This sentiment is mirrored in my own family. Already in this election cycle, I am barely on speaking terms with half of my family.
By way of background, I come from a family of lifelong Republican Cuban-Americans. My parents were poor working-class refugees to this country, and they never accepted help from the government. Everything they had was paid by hard sacrifice. They thanked this country for saving them. They felt so betrayed by the Bay of Pigs incident that they vowed never to vote Democrat. To them, democrats are all potential communists or socialists, mostly because we on the left are weak in condemning the atrocities of dictatorships and the Cuban regime. In their eyes, we promote engagement as a magical tool and are naive about engagement's human cost. Growing up in Miami in my family, fights over Cuba policy were a daily ritual.
Full disclosure, I am a confirmed Democrats, and I am committed to getting Joe Biden elected as the next president of the United States.
Engagement is not some romantic lovefest of cultural exchanges and sports matches, as some might think. It is not about coddling to dictators, and it is not supporting communism or socialism. The power of engagement is that we so strongly believe in the power of capitalism and democracy that open communication and exchange will help ruthless regimes implode. It will eat the system up from within and cause divisions between the haves and the have-nots. Make no mistake that in Cuban over the last 20 years, a news upper and middle class has been created, the former being military generals and so-called "communists" (in name only) and the ladder being workers in the tourism sector.
There is a new class of Cubans who replaced the exiles who stand to lose from the current system's fall. At the same time, those new elites are hungry for the outside world. They are the ones we have to engage. They are the ones that have to betray the system that keeps them as elites. Sanctions won't topple the Cuban government, otherwise, it would have been toppled a long time ago. However, as we know from many countries, engagement alone does not change a communist country into a democratic state. Engagement needs broad support, and more needs to be done to prepare the ground for it. The potential of engagement needs to be made much more visible.
The thing is that every US President has failed the Cuban community when it comes to US policy on Cuba. Our policy is born out of national and electoral politics. It is schizophrenic vacillating between useless sanctions and mediocre engagement. The Helms-Burton law was also a waste of taxpayer money and had the opposite effect. Engagement policy within the Cuban context has had a spotty history. Normalization had the opposite effect on the regime.
In the last month before the election, I want Joe Biden to return to Miami again and make his case to the Cuban-American community. I want him to invite Cuban-American leaders, artists, academics, and activists and look them in the eyes and answer the following questions:
- How will Cuban policy in a Biden-Harris administration be different from normalization in the Obama Administration and the Bush or Trump administrations' sanctions?
- How will a new administration recognize and correct the failures of the first attempt at engagement, and how will a new engagement policy be created?
- How can we spark an intra-Cuban dialogue involving prominent Cuban-American families like (De La Cruz, Fanjul, Mas, etc.), political leaders, experts, and activists to generate broad support in the future?
- How will we track/support human rights activists and dissidents and keep a spotlight on them to ensure they are not forgotten?
- How will we work with Europeans to be more creative in our international policy?
- How might targeted incentives look?
- How will individual sanctions on high ranking Cubans who are exploiting the Cuban people be developed?
- How will we support U.S. civil society engaging with their counterparts in Cuba?
- How can we make maximum use of social media and digital technology to generate non-violent action and engagement?
Sanctions don't work. They never have. They look good for elections. Otherwise, truth be told, we make peace with our enemies, not our friends. But we have to hold them accountable. At this moment in history, our biggest mistake is that we will continue with our outdated sanctions policy and allow Russia and China to gain influence in Cuba again. It's time to create a new and bold Cuba policy based on constructive engagement AND realpolitik.
#Biden #Cuba #Miami #Elections